Facebook ads on mobile – it’s too much

Facebook has to make money in order to exist. I get that. I also get that we, as its users, are the product.

But this is taking things a bit far:

image

Let’s do some quick calculations – the top banner and its associated “story” is 200px tall. Each of the two status updates visible are 100px. The “pages you may like” section, which is unquestionably advertising if a little less direct, takes up the last 210 pixels of screen real estate. It’s probably around 250px total. So the ratio of ads to content on the first screen is over 2:1. Great.

It’s now at the point where it’s impacting the experience in a significant way. The mobile HTML5 site is the same, the only acceptable experience in my view is the desktop version, which with Adblock plus installed (it doesn’t block everything), offers a fairly uninstrusive experience. The advertising is there, but it’s not in your face like the mobile site.

It’s also remarkable, given how much information Facebook has on me, how poorly targeted the ads are. Time to uninstall Facebook mobile.

2 thoughts on “Facebook ads on mobile – it’s too much

  1. Ankur

    Just one thing, I am not taking sides here, but given the amount of servers they have to handle and the trends indicating more people using mobile devices, FB have very little option but to introduce adverts on mobile platforms.

    Reply
    1. Alex Post author

      Yes, it’s a problem that all ad-supported services face with mobile devices getting more and more screen time.

      Smaller screens have less space, and as an end user I find ads on mobile far more intrusive than I do on desktop. There are no easy answers, but personally I prefer paid models to “free” ad-supported ones. The problem with something like Facebook is that it would never work as a paid service.

      Reply

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